Published
by: Swoon Romance
Publication
date: September 8th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young
Adult
Synopsis
Katie
thought she knew where her life was going. She was dating the captain of the
football team, had a BFF for life, and everyone at school wanted to be her. But
then her pregnant teen sister’s pregnancy changes all that. Everyone dumps her,
including her friends and boyfriend.
Hey,
Katie, welcome to life at the bottom of the high school food chain. This is how
the other half lives.
Then
there’s Nick. He’s a straight-A student and self-professed geek who’s had a
thing for her since middle school. He needs a date for the winter formal, and
Katie needs something to keep her busy. Nick’s plight becomes her personal pet
project. She will help him get over his insecurities and get a date. Besides,
she was popular once. She knows how to get dates.
But
Nick has other plans. He’s going to use these “dating” lessons as a way to win
Katie’s heart.
Chapter One
Katie
A
cry pierced the five-second silence that could’ve raised the hackles on a cute
baby seal. If cute baby seals had hackles … I didn’t know. Pulling the
worthless, spongy ear plugs from my ears, I jotted down a note on an empty page
in the notebook I’d left open the night before. To Google: Do baby seals have
hackles? What exactly are hackles anyways?
The
lined notebook paper was hard to see in the dim light of my room, let alone the
soft pencil marks I was scribbling. Hoping I’d be able to read the quick,
exhausted lines in the morning when the world stopped punishing me, I pushed it
aside and sat up.
Fluorescent
teeth glared at me like a lighthouse beam from the corner of the room. As the
peacefulness of sleep retreated further, a ghost of a face appeared around the
mouth along with the rest of the lanky but fit, and relaxed yet somehow staged
form. More bodies came into focus next to him with equally radiant, ten-minute,
glow-in-the-dark smiles.
It
was a poster of a boy-band I couldn’t even remember the name of anymore. Pretty
sure I was in love with the boy in the middle once upon a time, but that had to
have been at least two years ago. His name started with an H. Henry, maybe? No.
Harry. No. Horny? Yes. That was it. Had to have been Horny.
The
poster was a pre-niece poster. Pre-sixteen-and-pregnant episode going on right
in my own house. The only thing I’d never have to write down in my musings
notebook: Should I have a kid?
Second
of all, my mom would probably disown me, but first of all—the biggest first
ever—I would never find out if my mom was that heartless because I’d never let
it get that far. I was never getting pregnant. Like never. Because what came
from a pregnancy? Babies. Or hell spawn. Or schizoid minions, if you wanted to
be exact about it.
Sure,
babies could be cute at times. However, I was convinced my niece had horns that
slid out of her blond curls in the middle of the night. Hanna had this thing
where she liked to scream her head off at the most inappropriate times. Mostly
sleeping times. Like right now. The clock confirmed it was only four thirty in
the morning. Four thirty! Alicia wasn’t even home from work yet, which meant
Mom was most likely trying to calm the baby down in the baby/Alicia’s room. My
sister gave up all rights to her own room when she allowed herself to get
knocked up.
I
picked up a rolled sock at my feet and threw it at Horny’s happy-go-lucky face.
I’d be happy too if I was rich and hung up in every adolescents’ bedroom for
them to fawn over … and didn’t have a sister who couldn’t keep her legs closed
… and could ace school without the necessary hours of sleep.
A
shrill scream from the other room punctuated my thoughts with a gigantic
exclamation point. My own house was a sideshow. No need to travel to Nowhere,
Ohio to see oddities like the Biggest Ball of Yarn. A quick drive down
Clamberry Lane would do.
Untangling
my legs from the sheets, I stood and tiptoe-ran from the room. The soles of my
bare feet allowed the cold from the hardwood floors to seep through my skin and
ice its way from my chipped toe nail polish all the way to my mousy brown hair.
There was no time to put slippers on even if I could remember where my puppy
ones were, or remember where anything was lately. If Mom and I wanted any more
sleep tonight, we had to put Hanna back to bed. Immediately.
The
door to Alicia/Hanna’s room was slightly ajar. Before pushing it open, I took a
huge breath.
What
was supposed to calm me did the exact opposite. The smell of baby powder only
served as a reminder that I wouldn’t get a full night’s sleep until I left for
college in another year and a half. Distracted, and now thoroughly annoyed, I
pushed the bedroom door open.
Mom
stood in the middle of the room doing this bopping up and down swinging thing
she thought Hanna liked, never once realizing it hadn’t ever put her to sleep
since day one. She turned, her wild, snaky hair knotted around her face, her
eyes a mix between sadness, exhaustion, and relief. It was always the relief
that bothered me.
“I
got her,” I said.
She
plopped the devil-crier into my arms. Hanna looked up for a brief second and I
thought her wails might subside, but no, she was just gearing up for another
ear-piercer. Why was it she always looked so good, even when she was ensuring
I’d need hearing aids when I was sixty? Sure, she was red from screaming and
snot was dripping from her nose, but it was always Mom and me who looked like
we were dragged through thorny bushes and tossed into a manure patch to wilt.
Hanna always looked adorable. Angelic. Her tousled curls perfectly framing her
face.
I
made soothing noises and leaned down to sniff her head. She smelled awesome
too. Not fair. I wanted to be mad at her but it was just so dang hard when she
was so perfect.
Mom
put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Thanks—”
I
flinched away. “Just go to bed, Mom. Get some sleep.”
She
dropped her head to the side. A flicker of wanting to say more shone in her
eyes. I’d noticed the look more often lately. Thoughts were rising to the
surface and threatening to spew out. They were practically on her lips, but I
didn’t want to get into it. Not right now. Not ever.
“Go
to bed.” I said, patting Hanna’s back. “You’re going to make her start crying again.”
Her
eyes widened, more from hurt than surprise. Slowly, she turned and I watched
numbly as she walked away, her plaid pajama pants twisted oddly around her
waist. She must have been too tired to balk at my attitude. Though we did kind
of have this unspoken agreement that when we were woken up in the wee hours of
the morning, we were allowed to be moody.
Alicia
and Hanna’s room matched the décor of the rest of the house, which could only
be described as baby dump. It was like a parenting magazine threw up in every
room. Except mine. Never mine. I barred anything baby from being in my room
except the actual baby.
Several
Sippy cups sat on the dresser and toys dotted every available horizontal
surface, and some vertical ones too. They were everywhere. Just everywhere.
Unbelievable places I wasn’t even sure Hanna could get at. A pink-tongued snake
half slithered its way from behind the dresser mirror. Hanna was too small to
put that there, she couldn’t even reach the top of the dresser let alone the dresser
mirror.
The
cooing noised I’d been making seemed to work. Her lungs stopped expelling
bloody murder and turned to soft cries. But her tiny little fists? They still
gripped my tank top and wouldn’t let go.
There
was a time when I wanted to be just like my sister. Up until she got pregnant,
I tried to follow in her high school footsteps. That seemed like eons ago now.
Plush snake heads and baby alarm clocks were not my idea of a good time.
Apparently, the baby in my hands never got the
message. When Alicia started working nights, I was the only one who could calm
Hanna down. I basically took over all Mommy functions when my sister wasn’t
around, which was at opposites with still trying to have a normal life and
bringing my grades up.
Good
grades and a decent SAT score were essential to me getting into college.
Unfortunately, my pre-niece self had been more interested in boys and parties
and best friends than thinking about college. I needed good grades so I could
get out of here. This lack of sleep thing wasn’t helping, though.
I
lifted Hanna from my shoulder to stare at her. Her eyelashes were wet and
spiky. They fluttered and then, bam, she was out again.
Just
call me the baby whisperer.
I
laid her down, zombie-walked back to my room, and threw myself in bed again. A
half hour later, Alicia came home. Her car thrummed in the driveway, her key
clicked in the lock, and her exhausted feet stomped to her now-cohabitated
bedroom. With her arrival, a heavy, acrid, black cloud fell over our house.
I
was a miniscule white dot in a sea of dark, and, not for the first time, wished
my sister would take her poor decisions and wasted dreams and leave.
***
The
alarm clock clicked on at six a.m. and belted out the tune to that new
soul-revolting pop song, I’ll love you for the rest of my life. It’s you or
die, baby.
Gag.
Me. Now. That wasn’t real life. Real life was the fact that my eyes were
stinging and tired from being painted wide open, staring at the ceiling, and
listening to Hanna get fussier and fussier in the room on the other side of
Horny’s smile. Alicia would have a fit if neither one of us got Hannah from the
room so she could sleep her night shift away.
When
she’d first got the job, she’d tried to lobby for Hanna and I to share a room
because we were on the same sleep schedule. Yeah. Nope. Hanna, okay, but Hanna
sleeping in my room would require her bed, her bottles, her toys, and pretty
soon my room would look like Alicia’s and that sure as hell wasn’t happening.
The
baby powder smell hit me again when I walked into Alicia’s room. It used to
smell like Tommy Girl perfume and nail polish remover. Hanna stood in her crib,
her little fists outstretched, opening and closing toward me. I swung her onto
my hip and didn’t bother being quiet as I shut the door. I was pretty sure
Alicia mumbled something that sounded like “itch,” but I didn’t care. My being
crabby toward her was yet another side effect of her being a teenage mother.
I
changed Hanna out of her nighttime diaper, then watched as she clumsily walked
around the living room looking for something to do. Finally, she pointed at the
television and said, “Tee?”
I
turned cartoons on and watched along with her as the writers and illustrators
of today turned the perfectly awesome cartoons I’d grown up on into travesties
of nature. No wonder why the youth of today were screwed up. What Hanna needed
was a good old-fashioned cartoon, not this crap.
She
needed the antics of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, not this metaphorical
nonsense.
When
Mom got out of the shower, we switched places wordlessly. This had been our
morning routine for about a year and it always felt like a personal victory
when I actually made it to the curb on time, with clothes on the right way, my
book bag in my hand, and a fake smile on my face to see Nic pull up. The thing
about Nic though, what always started out as me faking a smile, turned into a
real one when he was around.
Nic
was a juxtaposition.
Hmm.
Note to self to make note in notebook: Am I using the word juxtaposition
correctly?
He
dressed like he could never quite make out who he wanted to be and therefore
ended up making himself new every day. He wore punk rock T-shirts under
Einstein button-up sweaters. He wore loafers with jeans and Nikes with khakis.
The only constant about him was his glasses.
As
the door swung open, Nic held out a white Styrofoam cup. “Full many a glorious
morning have I seen …”
I
took it, smiling, and then after taking a long, wonderful sip, I said, “And
blessed is thee who brings me coffee made from bean?”
His
face screwed up and the glasses slipped a little down his nose. He had on a red
and black plaid collared shirt over a Call of Duty T. He fixed his glasses,
still squinting. “Made from bean?”
“…sss?
Made from beanssss? Would that have made more sense?”
He
cracked a smile. “You never make sense. Did they have coffee back in
Shakespeare’s day?”
Of
course I never made sense. He should try getting interrupted sleep day in and
day out. Wait … night in and night out?
See?
Proved my case.
I
leaned my book bag against my shins and took another long sip of the steaming
cup, squelching the need to say what I’d just thought out loud. It upset Nic
when I said things like that. He didn’t get mad, only troubled, as if it made
him sad to know I wasn’t happy.
I
pointed to the cup in my hand. “Thank you. For this.”
He
shrugged. “I know you need it to function.”
The
word “now” was carelessly left off the end of his sentence. He knew I needed it
to function now. I never needed it before. Didn’t even drink coffee pre-niece.
I was good with OJ, or milk, or any of the other breakfast drinks. Just not
now. I needed caffeine.
“I
take it you did the Shakespeare reading we were supposed to do?” I asked.
Stupid question. He always did. We were taking the same English lit course.
Unfortunately for us though, we’d been put in different classes. It sucked. Big
time. “What sonnet is that from?”
“One
of the thirties I think. Did you read them?”
Shaking
my head, I said, “No. Not yet. I’ve got study hall today first period, though.
It’s on my agenda. Do you remember it? The sonnet?”
“The
beginning,” he said. He paused and rubbed his chin. “It reminded me of you.”
It
didn’t surprise me he’d remembered it. Nic had one of those carbon copy
memories when it came to literature. Words just stuck inside him like fly
paper. As he recited the poem, I pictured the words catching to the paper and
hanging on for dear life. I wished the inside of me looked like the inside of
Nic.
I
brought out the notebook I’d slipped in the front pocket of my book bag earlier
that morning and jotted down: Juxtaposition. Then, I wrote: 30’s. Poem with
glorious morning.
I
wanted to see what poem Nic thought was like me. Did he see me like I saw me?
If he did, the sonnet would be written in a tornado of words and I doubted
Shakespeare would have written something so hideous and disorganized.
Nic’s
laughter penetrated my thoughts. “Are you even listening?”
I
didn’t even have the decency to get embarrassed. He knew me too well.
“Sorry.
Say it again?”
He
took another breath and, like usual, the words flowed from him like a trickling
stream. Though Nic was considered a science geek at our school, his true
calling was something artistic. He could be an actor or a writer or something
where emotions ruled and not the brain. He felt things more than normal people.
At least, the way he said things was as if feelings were pouring from every
crevice.
“Full
many a glorious morning have I seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign
eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with
heavenly alchemy; anon permit the basest clouds to ride.”
Right
after glorious morning in my notebook, I wrote down: Anon permit the basest
clouds to ride???
What
the hell did that even mean? Mentally shrugging, I decided it didn’t really
matter. It sounded beautiful coming from Nic.
Purchase
AUTHOR BIO
Erin
Butler is lucky enough to have two jobs she truly loves. As a librarian,
she gets to work with books all day long, and as an author, Erin uses
her active imagination to write the kinds of books she loves to read.
Young Adult and New Adult books are her favorites, but she especially
fangirls over a sigh-worthy romance.
She
lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson,
and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing,
she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that
order.
Erin
is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a
contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance
title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her
at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or
@ErinButler on Twitter!
Author Links
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